The Critical Turn in Social Entrepreneurship Research

On the face of it, ‘social entrepreneurship’ represents
a concept whose meaning cannot be exhausted by a single definition.
Where its various interpretations have been conceived by some as a
hindrance to the unfolding of its full potential (e.g. Martin and
Osberg, 2007), the worrying point, in our estimate, is not that
‘social entrepreneurship’ encompasses too many meanings
but that the term’s potential richness, inventiveness and
radicalness has been narrowed down by dominant, politically-shaped
understandings of the word ‘social’. Giv-en that social
entrepreneurship has not been properly understood in its relation to
power, ideology and the rendition of the social as governable
terrain (Carmel and Harlock, 2008), our contribution departs from
the conviction that prevailing understandings of social
en-trepreneurship are limited as a result of being aligned with
elites’ comprehension of the good life and society propre.
Many possible understandings of social entrepreneurship be-come
unthinkable, precisely because they are made to appear to be
unreasonable, odd or illegitimate by prevailing standards of
truth.
We should critically reconsider the limitations to which social
entrepreneurship is currently subjected, so as to instigate more
imaginative articulations. However, the point is that a critique of
the social entrepreneurship canon is highly unlikely. But why
exactly is this the case? There are many reasons for the current
paucity of critical engagement with social entrepreneurship,
however, a case can be made that the widespread belief in the
redemp-tive power of management, combined with an unshakable belief
in the market as leverage for ‘making a difference’,
makes social entrepreneurship appear to be good, reasonable, and
necessary. Partly due to social entrepreneurship’s taintless
evaluative reputation, it has, in fact, become easier to celebrate
the most far-reaching utopia than to express even the most marginal
point of discontent. In other words, any provocative,
counter-intuitive or anach-ronistic enactment of social
entrepreneurship is neutralized a priori because this would direct
attention away from the ostensible “real-life” pressures
of the day, thus delaying the immediate involvement with
today’s most pressing social problems. Where dominant
nar-ratives of social entrepreneurship promote harmonious social
change based on instrumen-tal business-case logic (Arthur et al,
2010), this leaves little space for a substantial critique of social
entrepreneurship, for the simple reason that the canon suggests that
the solution is already there. Anyone who raises concerns is
immediately looked at suspiciously, because social entrepreneurship
is overwhelmingly perceived to have already passed the test of
critical scrutiny.

Whilst the costs related to the current normalisation of social
entrepreneurship are mani-fold, one of the pre-eminent problems is
that social entrepreneurship has been envisioned as a de-politicised
blueprint for dealing with social problems. In extremis, social
entrepre-neurship has been appointed the role of tackling the
symptoms of the capitalist system rather than its root causes
(Edwards, 2008), thus reinforcing a system that has lately re-vealed
its full toxicity (Noys, 2011). Because social entrepreneurship
appears to be beyond question, this paper wants to reclaim the space
of critique, for, as we will argue, critique is the pivotal quality
that must be fostered to overcome social entrepreneurship’s
current stasis and to unlock its potential. Given that the academic
treatment of social entrepreneur-ship has played a crucial role in
mainstreaming logics of problem-fixing, linear progression, and
social equilibrium, we will start by analysing academia’s
immanent critical potential.28 The first objective of this paper
will be to develop a typology of critical approaches that maps how
critique of social entrepreneurship is currently being done. As we
make clear that scholarly mechanisms of censorship and control are
not fully effective in averting criti-cal activity, the second
objective of this contribution will be to go beyond current
possibili-ties and to consider ways to expand the range of critical
approaches and, in particular, to describe ways for radicalising,
both conceptually and pragmatically, the critique of social
entrepreneurship. Overall, critique is viewed as a means for
problematising ‘social entre-preneurship’ with the aim
of releasing some of its suppressed possibilities (Sandberg and
Alvesson, 2011). By implication, critique is never an end in itself,
but rather serves as a means for creating solutions (both
imaginative and real) which are not possible within the matrix of
the present. Thus, by critically examining social entrepreneurship
we will, in the end, be able to implement social entrepreneurship
differently.
To develop our contributions, we will proceed in the following
manner. After a short expo-sition of the emergence of critical
approaches in social entrepreneurship, we will identify, based on a
review of the extant academic literature, four types of critique,
called ‘myth busting’, ‘critique of power
effects’, ‘normative critique’ and ‘critique
of transgression’, all of which will be presented and
discussed in terms of how they question and add a differ-ent, if not
fresh, view to some of social entrepreneurship’s most powerful
assumptions. Each type of critique is illustrated through a
particularly demonstrative study. Thereafter, we will discuss new
possibilities by focusing on the kinds of critique that elicit the
radical cause of social entrepreneurship. Emphasis will be placed on
fostering the view of critique as intervention (Steyaert, 2011), for
interventions clearly show that social entrepreneurship, the way we
know it, does not exhaust what social entrepreneurship might
become.

Dey, P., & Steyaert, C. (2012). The Critical Turn in Social
Entrepreneurship Research. In Toward an Ideology Critique of Social
Entrepreneurship, pp.20. Swindon UK: ESRC Economic and Social
Research Council.

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